Al-Abrik, Tephrike, the Capital of the Paulicians

1896

1896

THE

JOURNAL

ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY

GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND

1896.

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PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY,

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MDCCCX.CVI.

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x CONTENTS.

TACK

Art. XIV. — Note on TJdjana and Gandhara. By H. A.

Deane 655

Art. XY.— The Liturgy of the Nile. By the Rev. G.

Mabgoliouth, M.R.A.S 677

Art. XVI.— Al-Abrlfc, Tephrike, the Capital of the

Paulicians. By Gut lb Strange 733

Art. XVII. — Notes on Akbar's Subahs, with reference to
the Ain-i AkbarL No. II : Orissa. By John
Beames, B.C.S. (ret.) 743

Art. XVIII. — An Apocryphal Inscription in Khorasan.

By Net Elias, M.R.A.S , 767

Art. XIX. — Note on the Panjmana Inscription sent by

Mr. Ney Elias. By H. Bevrbidge, M.R.A.S. . . 781

Art. XX. — An inscription of Madanapaladeva of Kanauj.

By C. Bendall 787

Art. XXI. — On a system of Letter-numerals used in South

India. By C. Bendall 789

Correspondence.

1. " 8hah Daulah's Rats." By W. H. D. Rouse . . 793

2. "Antiquity of Eastern Falconry." By W. F.

Sinclair 793

Notes of the Quarter.

I. Contents of Foreign Oriental Journals 797

II Notes and News 798

III. Notices or Books —

Captain P. R. Gurdon, 1.8. C. Some Assamese

Proverbs. Reviewed by R. N. Cust 807

R. Sewell & SI B. Dikshit, and Dr. R. Schram.

The Indian Calendar, with tables. By F.

Ktelhorn , 809

Professor Hilprecht. The Babylonian Expedition

of the University of Pennsylvania. By

A. VT. X . ••)•• himiim •miiiiMi OlO

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Art. XVI. — Al-Abrik, Tephrike, the Capital of the
Pauliciam: a correction corrected. By Guy le Strange.

It is, I hope, never too late to acknowledge a mistake and
correct a blunder. Since the appearance of my note on the
Castle of Abrlk (see J.R.A.S. for October, 1895, p. 739),
Professor De Goeje has called my attention to a passage iu
the " Tanbih " of Mas'udi, which negatives the identification
of Abrlk with the modern Arabkir, and proves incontro-
vertibly that Tephrike, of which there can be little doubt
that Divrigi (or Divrik) is the present representative, must
be the place which various Arab geographers describe under
the name aforesaid of Abrlk or Abruk.

In the " Decline and Fall," chapter Hv, Gibbon gives an
interesting account of the Paulicians (so called after one
Paul, their founder), a curious sect of Eastern Christians,
whose Manichaean beliefs caused them to be ruthlessly
persecuted by the orthodox emperors of Constantinople.
In the latter part of the ninth century a.d., Carbeas,
whose father had been impaled as a heretic by the Catholic
inquisitors, led the revolt of the Paulicians. He founded
and fortified the city of Tephrike, and, aided by the armies
of the Caliph, utterly routed the Emperor Michael under
the walls of Samosata. His successor, Chrysocheir, over-ran
and plundered the whole of Asia Minor, but was finally
defeated and slain by the troops sent against him by the
Emperor Basil. "With Chrysocheir, the glory of the
Paulicians faded and withered ; on the second expedition
of the Emperor, the impregnable Tephrike was deserted by
the heretics, who sued for mercy and escaped to the
borders." This is the account given by Gibbon on the
authority of the Byzantine Chroniclers, and, as will be seen,

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734 AL-ABRIK, TEPH&IKE,

it agrees perfectly with the following passages from nearly
contemporary Arab authorities— Mas'udi, who wrote in
943 a.d., and Kudama, circd 880 a.d.

I should begin by stating that the name of the Paulicians
occurs in the Arabic under the form of Baylakani, which
is the nearest available rendering of the Greek word
TIavkuudvoi (the Arabs having no P), and that the plural
of Baylakdni is Baydlaka, a form which less clearly recalls
the Greek original.

The heresy of Paul of Samosata is mentioned by
Shahrastani in his "History of Sects and Philosophical
Schools" (see vol. i, pp. 262 and 266 of the translation by
T. Haarbriicker) ; but there appears to be some confusion
here between the reputed founder of the Paulicians and
his namesake, the Patriarch of Antioch, a celebrated
Monarchian heresiarch, who troubled the Church in more
wayd than one during the third century of the Christian
era. This confusion, however, is unimportant to the matter
now under discussion, which deals solely with the events
of the ninth century after Christ, when, as a matter of
historical geography, it becomes important to establish the
identity between the Arab " Abrik " and the Greek
" Tephrike " : and this identification is proved by the
following.

Mas'udi, in his "Tanbih" (p. 151), while enumerating
the various Christian sects, mentions that of the Baylakani,
which " is the sect instituted by Paulus of Shimshat [read
Sumaysat, or Samosata], who originally had been Patriarch
of Antioch." Mas'udi, later on in the same work (p. 183),
when speaking of the various fortresses which, after having
once been in Moslem hands, had now come to be reconquered
by the Greeks, makes mention of Malatiyya, Shimshat,
Hisn-Mansur, "and the Castle of Abrik, which was the
capital of the Baylakani, where lived many of their
Patriarchs [or Patricians], such as Karbiyas [Carbeas],
the Client of the family of Tahir-ibn-al-Husayn, also
Kharsakharis [Chrysocheir] , and besides these two some
others."

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THE CAPITAL Of THE PAULICIAN& 735

The same author, in his "Golden Meadows" (viii, 74),
further relates that a certain Greek, who had by conversion
become a good Moslem, gave him (Mas'udi) a full account
of Constantinople, adding that there was in that city
a church where were kept ten statues representing persons
celebrated among the Christians for their valour and
wisdom : " of these is Karbiyas the Baylakani, Lord of
the City of Abrik, which at the present day belongs to
the Greeks, and he was Patrician [or Patriarch] of these
Baylakani, his death having taken place in the year 249
[a.d. 863]. There is also here the statue of Kharsakharis,
who was the sister [the MSS. here are corrupt; we should

perhaps read " successor "] of Karbiyas Now mention

has been made elsewhere of the sect of the Baylakani and
of their beliefs, and they are a sect part Christian, part
Magian, but at this present time [a.h. 332, a.d. 943] they
have migrated, and now live among the nation of the
Greeks."

Another contemporary author who mentions the Pau-
licians is Kudama, who, naming the Greek provinces
(" Book on the Revenues," p. 254) which lie over
against the territory of Malatiyya (Melitene), mentions
the districts of Kharshana and Khaldaya, that is the
Charsianian and the Chaldian Themes. It may be
noted in passing that there seems to be much confusion
as to the identification of the site of Kharshana. Ibn
Khurdadbih, in his "Road Book" (p. 108), writes: "The
Kharsiyua District is near the Darb [pass or high-road]
of Malatiyya. In this district lies the fortress of Kharshana,
together with four others " ; and conformably with this,
in my paper on Ibn Serapion (p. 747), I have, on the
authority of Mr. Hogarth, identified Kharshana with the
present village of Alaja Khan lying on the upper waters of
the Kuru Tchay, the older Jarjarlya. It appears, however,
from Professor Ramsay's " Historical Geography " (p. 249
and elsewhere) that Charsianon Castron, the original of the
Arab Kharshana, is to be sought, not at the village of Alaja
Khan, but at Alaja, an important road-centre to the west

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736 AL-ABRIK, TEPBRIKE,

of the upper Halys, and this Alaja was the ancient Karissa
or Garsi. From Alaja Ehan to Alaja there is a distance,
as the crow flies, of over 150 miles, and they must not
therefore be confounded.

To return, however, to the Paulicians, Kudama (already
quoted) states in his " Book on the Revenues " (p. 254) that
between Malatiyya, Kharshana, Khaldaya, and the Armenian
country is " the land which was settled by a people called
the Baylakani, who are of the Greeks, except for certain
differences that exist between the two in matters of faith.
These people used to give aid to the Moslems during their
raids [into the Greek country], and their aid was greatly
valued by the Moslems. All at once, however, they
migrated away from this land, in consequence of the evil
conduct of the governors of the [Moslem] frontier who had
dealings with them, and of the little honour that they
received at the hands of those appointed to look after their
affairs [by the Caliph], Hence the Paulicians have come
to be dispersed abroad throughout the [Greek] lands, while
in their place, now, the Armenians have settled."

In his French translation of this passage ("Bibl. Geog.
Arab./' vi, p. 176), Professor De Goeje tentatively pro-
posed the reading "Naylakani" or " Naykalani," that is
Nicholceam, for Baylakani, Paulicians, the MSS. being here
corrupt, and the letters n and b in Arabic only differing by
the position of a diacritical point. I have Professor De
Goeje's authority, however, for stating that Baylakani is
without doubt the true reading.

From the above it follows that Abrik, capital of the
Paulicians, as described by Arab geographers, is un-
doubtedly the place which the Byzantine authors call
Tephrike; and as this last is represented by the modern
Divrigi, or Divrik, on the Tchalta Irmak, the Arab Castle
of Abrik and the river of the same name must be respec-
tively Divrik and the Tchalta river, and not the fortress of
Arabkir, which stands on the Saritchitchek Su, many miles
to the south.

It of course follows that the tributary of the Abrik

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THE CAPITAL OF THE PAULICIANS. 737

called the river Zamra (or Zimara, as our MS. of Ibn
Serapion also spells the name) cannot be either the Miram
Tchay or the Kistek Tchay, which joins the Saritchitchek
Su (see J.R.A.S. 1895, pp. 65 and 744). Zamra must
have been the name of one of the tributaries of the
Tchalta Irmak (Abrik river), which joined that stream
below Divrigi, for Ibn Serapion writes that "it falls
into the river Abrik a little below the Castle of Abrik "
(loc. cit. t p. 63). This identification is certainly favoured
by the fact that at the present day a village called
Zimarra 1 still exists near here. Mr. Vincent W. Yorke,
who has recently returned from a journey through this
country of the upper waters of the Euphrates, informs
me that the present Zimarra Su is a tributary of the
Euphrates, and joins the great river a short way above
the mouth of the Tchalta Irmak. The Zimarra Su does not,
therefore, fit the case of the Zamra river, as described by
Ibn Serapion ; which last must have been one of the
streams marked (but not named) in Kiepert's Map, which
are left-bank tributaries of the Tchalta Irmak, flowing in
from the country near Zimarra village.

Coming to the river Liikiya, which in note 4 to p. 57 of
my paper on Ibn Serapion was wrongly identified with the
Tchalta Irmak (the Tchalta being undoubtedly the Abrik
river), this Liikiya most probably is one of the two important
streams which join the right bank of the Euphrates a little
above the junction of the Tchalta. These streams are not
named in Kiepert's Map, but Mr. Torke writes that they
are both of considerable volume, being called respectively
the Armidan Tchay and the Kara Budak. One of them
must be the Liikiya aforesaid, and on it lay the " single
fortress " mentioned on p. 54 of my paper.

The next right-bank tributary of the Euphrates, the
Nahr Anja, I now believe to be identical with the river
called the Saritchitchek Su, 2 wrongly identified (loc. cit., p. 58)

1 Also Zimara is the name of a station mentioned in the Pentinger Tables,
the Antonine Itinerary, etc.
a 8^11 called Angu Tchay near its mouth, according to Mr. Yorke.

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738 AL-ABRIS, TKPHRIKE,

with the Abrlk river. In the former list of identifications,
the river Anja could only come in as either the short stream
on which stands the village of Tchermuk (loc. ciL, p. 58)
or its neighbour, the Soyut Tchay (idem, p. 744). Neither
of these, however, correspond with the description given
by Ibn Serapion of the course of the Anja, which "rises
in the mountain of Abrlk, a little way above the crossing
the high-road from Malatiyya" (loc. cit., p. 54). The "high-
road" here mentioned must mean the Great Road going
from Melitene westwards into the Greek Country (the
ancient High-road to Constantinople) ; and the important
stream of the Anja — described as flowing down " between
mountains," exactly corresponds with the course of the
river now known as the Saritchitchek Su, which rises far
to the westward, and on whose banks stands the modern
capital of the district, Arabkir. It may be noted in passing
that Arabkir is apparently mentioned by none of the
mediaeval Arab geographers. It is called Nareen in the
old Turkish fiscal Archives, as is recorded by Taylor (see
J. R. Geogr. Society, xxxviii, page 311).

The only point against the identification of the Anja with
the Saritchitchek Su, is the statement made in Ibn Serapion
that the Anja joined the Euphrates "at a distance five
leagues below the mouth of the river Arsands" (p. 54). But
the Arabic MS. is here defective; "Arsanas" is written
"Asnas," and I now believe this may be a clerical error
for " Abrlk," a word with which it might easily be con-
founded in the Arabic writing. In the loose way in which
Ibn Serapion counts distances, the Anja (Saritchitchek Su)
might well be described as flowing into the Euphrates " five
leagues below the Nahr Abrlk," that is to say, a little
way above the junction of the Murad Tchay or Arsanas
river. If " Abrlk " for " Arsanas " be deemed too bold an
emendation, the facts of the case will be equally suited by
changing the adverb " below " into " above " (and read fa*&
in the Arabic text of Ibn Serapion, p. 11, line 5 from below,
in place of as/al), but the distance of " five leagues above the
mouth of the Nahr Arsanas " for the incoming of the Anja

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THE CAPITAL OF THE PAUMCIANS.

739

river is only approximately correct for describing the mouth
of the Saritchitchek Su.

In a tabular form the identifications now proposed for the
right-bank (western) tributaries of the Upper Euphrates are
as follows, beginning above and working down stream : —

(I) Lftfclya (river)

(II) Abrifc (river and town)

(ILi) Zamra (river)

(III) Anja (river)

is either the Kara
Budak or the Armi-
dan Tchay,

is the Tchalta Irmak
and the town of
Divrik (Tephrike),

is an affluent of the
Tchalta Irmak,

is the Saritchitchek Su,

not the Tchalta Irmak
(p. 57, note 2).

not the Saritchitchek
Su (p. 58, note 3),
and not Arabkir
(p. 740).

not the Miram Tchay
(p. 65, note 2), nor
the Kiztek Tchay
(p. 744).

not the stream of the
Tchermuk village (p.
58, note 8), nor tne
SoyutTchay(p.744).

As showing that Tephrike also among the Byzantines
bore, a name very like Abrlk, it is to be noticed that the
Greek MSS. of two of their Chronicles give, as a variant
for Tephrike, the name Aphrike (Tefoi/ci], variant *A<t>pt,icq).
My attention was first called to this passage by Mr. Yorke,
who has also pointed out to me that the name of the Zarnuk
river, a tributary of the Kubakib, which flows into the
Euphrates near Malatiyya (Melitene), is mentioned in the
Byzantine Chronicles under the forms Zapvov% and
% Ar^oLpvoviCy which, seeing that n and b are unlikely to be
sub8tituted for one another in the Greek letters, disposes
of the alternative form, given in the MS. of Ibn Serapion,
of "Zarftuk" (he. cit, p. 743).

What, however, may be gleaned on this and kindred
subjects from the Byzantine Chronicles has recently been
ably discussed in the pages of the Classical Review (for
April, 1896), in a most interesting article entitled "The

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740 AL-ABR1K, TEPHRIKE,

Campaign of Basil I against the Paulicians in 872 a.d.,"
by Mr. J. G. C. Anderson, of the University of Aberdeen,
to whom (and Professor Ramsay) I am indebted for much
valuable information. In the course of his discussion of
the various Byzantine accounts of the campaign of Basil I
against the Paulicians, Mr. Anderson shows that the river
Karakis, described by Ibn Serapion, is also almost certainly
mentioned by the Byzantines. Readers of this Journal
who take an interest in the mediaeval geography of Asia
Minor, and the question of the frontier fortresses lying
between the Greeks and the Saracens, may be referred to
this paper, where a solution is offered of the thorny question
as to the true sites of Zibatra and Hadath.

There can be no doubt that Zibatra of the Moslems is
identical with the fortress called either Zapetra or Sozopetra
by the Byzantine Chroniclers, for the story of its capture
by the Emperor Theophilus, and its recapture by the Caliph
Mu'tasim during his celebrated expedition against Amorium,
is narrated alike by both the Greek and the Arab annalists
(compare Gibbon, "Decline and Fall," vi, 413, with Weil,
" Geschichte der Chalifen," ii, 309). The question remains
as to the situation of Zibatra, which neither the Greeks
nor the Arabs very accurately describe. What the latter
have recorded will be found in my notes to Ibn Serapion
(p. 66), while the Greek authorities have now been examined
by Mr. Anderson, and the results will be found in his paper
above referred to.

It may be mentioned, however, as supporting the view
that Zibatra must be sought at the present Viran-Shahr
on the Sultan Su (and this was my first identification,
which Mr. Anderson confirms by what is stated in the
Byzantine Chronicles) and not at Derendeh (as is one
of the suggestions offered by Mr. Hogarth : see Ibn
Serapion, p. 745), that Derendeh is itself mentioned,
under the form farandah, by the contemporary Arab
authorities. Baladhuri (p. 185, and he is copied by Ibn-
al-Athlr and Yakut) states that Tarandah, which lay three
marches distance from Malatiyya, deep in the Greek

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THE CAPITAL OF THE PAULICIAXS. 741

country, was garrisoned by the Moslems after a.h. 83
(702), but was subsequently abandoned by orders of the
Caliph Omar II in a.h. 100 (719). Zibatra, therefore,
cannot have been identical with farandah, which is another
place. Mr. Anderson, also, gives us references to the
Byzantine Chronicles proving that Taranta was a Paulician
stronghold, and there is no reason to doubt the identification
of Byzantine " Taranta," Arab " Taranda," and the modern
Derendeh, which lies high up on the Tokhma Su.

Further, in confirmation of the view adopted by Mr.
Anderson and Professor Ramsay that the site of Hadath
must be sought at or near the modern Inekli, on the Ak-Su,
may be mentioned the statement found in the Geographical
Dictionary of Bakri (p. 657). In the article on 'Arbasus
(Arabissos, Al-Bustan) the author describes this as a city of
the Greeks lying " over against " or " opposite " Biadath,
thus leading us to infer that Hadath (a place doubtless
well known to him) was on the nearer and Moslem side of
Arabissos, and to the south of that city.

In conclusion, I venture to point out that the historical
geography of Asia Minor is likely to gain a yet firmer
basis, if the accounts of the Byzantine annalists be
systematically compared with, and a corrective applied from,
the works of the contemporary Arab geographers.

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